The invention relates a method and apparatus for repairing and reinforcing walls having cracks and other structural defects.
Damage to unreinforced brick buildings caused by earthquakes includes cracks through brick walls due to horizontal offset in the plane of the wall. These cracks generally do not represent hazardous or unstable conditions, but rather weakening that, in future earthquake shaking could lead to further cracking and hazardous instability or loss of bricks from the wall. Engineers evaluating earthquake damaged buildings often find obviously repairable damage such as fallen parapets and partial separations of framing from bearing walls. However, cracks in brick walls have not been easily evaluated for repairability, and previously no economical, structurally effective, and aesthetically acceptable repair method has been known.
A prior art method of crack repair is removal of bricks adjacent to the crack and resetting them along with a reinforcing bar parallel to the crack in new mortar. However, this method can only address the exposed wythes. It also risks the probability of propagating cracks and loosening bricks above the repair as support is taken away by the removal process. There is also probability of damage to the wall adjacent to header bricks that must be removed or broken. Moreover, this prior art method installs tensile capacity oriented at right angles to the tensile force that caused the crack, and it is a very labor intensive method.
Accordingly, it is an object of the invention to provide a novel method and apparatus for repairing brick walls.